Press Releases

The Advertising Industry’s Leading Automation Company is Rapidly Growing its World-Class Organization By Adding Key Seasoned Executives, Including a CMO and Head of Seller Cloud

Rubicon Project (www.rubiconproject.com), which operates the industry’s largest independent real-time trading platform for digital advertising, announced today that it has expanded and deepened its senior leadership team by hiring and promoting several seasoned executives in the product, marketing and leadership areas, including the company’s first Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Seller Cloud positions.

“These executive hires and promotions continue to demonstrate our conviction that Rubicon Project has always believed that in order to become a great company we must first hire and promote great people,” said Greg Raifman, President of Rubicon Project. “With great people, we can build great products, and great products attract our valued customers. Today I’m proud to announce that we recently hired two impressive industry veterans, as well as promoted two equally successful executives from within our own ranks.”

Julie Ginches, Chief Marketing Officer — Global marketing veteran Julie Ginches has joined the company as Chief Marketing Officer. With more than two decades spent working with the top technology companies in both the advertising and enterprise industries such as DataXu, Jumptap, FAST and Automony, Ginches brings proven leadership and innovative customer focused programs to her new role as the head of Rubicon Project’s strategic marketing initiatives.

As our first ever Chief Marketing Officer of Rubicon Project, Julie Ginches is tasked with building the company’s leadership position in advertising automation technology and will report to Greg Raifman, President of Rubicon Project. She is responsible for all marketing functions, from leading the company’s global profile and go-to-market strategy to marketing communications, demand generation and product marketing. Ginches has 20 years experience in launching and growing high growth companies.

Ginches joins Rubicon Project from leading Programmatic Marketing Platform DataXu, where she led the company’s marketing efforts. Prior to DataXu, she served as VP of Marketing at mobile ad network Jumptap, (recently acquired by Millenial Media.) Ginches also led marketing groups at Autonomy, FAST (acquired by Microsoft), Epicon (acquired by Nortel Networks) and Easel Corporation.

“Over the past 6 years, Rubicon Project has done an excellent job establishing itself as a global market leader,” said Julie Ginches, CMO at Rubicon Project. “To date, most of the company’s investments have been in engineering and technology development. I look forward to building a world-class go-to-market engine to further advance the company’s reputation in developing the technological innovations that are transforming the buying and selling of advertising.”

Kaylie Smith, Head of Seller Cloud – Global product and sales manager Kaylie Smith has been promoted to Head of Seller Cloud from her previous role as Managing Director, APAC, where she was responsible for expanding the company’s presence in Australia, India, South East Asia and Japan, spearheading the pan-Asian expansion efforts for Rubicon Project. Now as Head of Seller Cloud, Kaylie will be entrusted with leading Rubicon Project’s Seller Cloud, which enables over 100,000 advertising brands to purchase impressions through bidders, ad networks, agencies or the latest technical breakthrough.

“After developing Rubicon Project’s programs and growth in the APAC region, I’m excited to continue my work with Rubicon Project on a global basis and take the best practices that we developed in Australia over the pond to North America,” said Kaylie Smith, Head of Seller Cloud.

Kaylie, who will relocate to the company’s headquarters in Los Angeles and report directly to Greg Raifman, brings more than 14 years of international interactive marketing experience to this role. Prior to joining Rubicon Project in January of 2013, Kaylie served as MD-APAC for RollUp Media, a content and media start up founded by DoubleClick alumni and also recently worked with a number of US based technology businesses to develop their APAC business strategy. Prior to joining RollUp Media, Kaylie served as the Head of Platforms – JAPAC for Google and the APAC Managing Director for DoubleClick, heading up their technology business across the region. In her 10+ year tenure with DoubleClick she also served as VP – Global Accounts in NY and San Francisco and in various Product Management roles.

Stacey Gomes, SVP, Product – Stacey Gomes, SVP, Product has been hired and brings 14 years of enterprise product management experience, including a decade at Oracle as a Product Manager for the Oracle Financials product. Most recently, Stacey was head of Professional Services VMS platform at ZeroChaos, where she was responsible for leading multiple Product Managers and Engineering teams across the globe to successfully deliver a complex suite of VMS applications to compete in the Professional Services VMS spend market. Stacey will be reporting to Frank Addante, the company’s Founder and CEO, who recently took on the added responsibility of Chief Product Architect to drive innovation faster at Rubicon Project.

“Rubicon Project is clearly ahead of the curve in creating innovative solutions and cutting edge technology for the advertising industry,” said Stacey Gomes, SVP, Product at Rubicon Project. “Now is the time to implement and standardize many of its best practices for automating the advertising industry, in the same way that we were able to accomplish this at industry leader Oracle.”

Ingrid Lestiyo, SVP, Operations & Strategy — Buyer Cloud — Ingrid Lestiyo, who formerly led product management for the company’s mobile initiative, has been promoted to the new position of Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy–Buyer Cloud, and will report to Josh Wexler, the company’s Head of Buyer Cloud. Ingrid, an experienced product manager, came to Rubicon Project via the acquisition of Mobsmith, Inc. in May 2013, where Ingrid was Co-Founder & CEO. Rubicon Project acquired Mobsmith to expand its offerings in the mobile advertising market as Mobsmith had developed a mobile ad-serving platform that offered both an agency side and a publisher side solution and incorporated serving, targeting, tracking and analytics. Before Mobsmith, Ingrid held several key senior roles at Yahoo! Inc., including Director, Product Management for the Yahoo! homepage, International Product Manager of Flickr, and International Product Strategy — Corporate International over the course of more than three years.

Ingrid was also named the winner of a prestigious Silver Stevie Award where she was recognized in the Female Entrepreneur of the Year category in the 9th annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business. Ingrid’s entrepreneurialism clearly impressed judges as Ingrid won in the Female Entrepreneur, Business Products category for 10 employees or less. You can read more on Ingrid’s award here.

“While I am thrilled to hand-off our mobile initiative to my trusted colleagues, I am excited to apply our mobile mandate to the Buyer Cloud and deliver best of breed solutions to better facilitate the needs of our buyers of our Advertising Automation Cloud, including advertisers, agencies, advertising networks and agency trading desks,” said Ingrid Lestiyo, SVP, Strategy & Operations, Buyer Cloud at Rubicon Project. Our mission at Rubicon Project has always been to automate the buying and selling of advertising and I am eager to help in this mission within the Buyer Cloud where we will focus all of our efforts in providing exceptional product solutions to our trusted buyers.”

“The recent hirings of Julie and Stacey, alongside the promotions of Ingrid and Kaylie, will be instrumental in solidifying Rubicon Project’s leadership in transforming and automating the advertising industry,” adds Raifman.